Bandcloud 298

I never know what to say here these days! Don't want to be falsely optimistic, don't want to be upsettingly dour. I've been even more nostalgic than usual this week. Possibly because the month of May tends to have a lot of memories for me? Who knows. I finished a book of short stories called Multitudes by Northern Irish writer Lucy Caldwell. It's excellent, but the tales are full of heartbreak and embarrassment, so much so that I found myself unconsciously chewing on my cheek as I was reading some of them.

OMIC-EMPTY LANDSCAPE
Omic is a new project from Irish producer Eomac. Inspired by Arthur Russel and Jim O'Rourke, he's going down the road of a kind of outsider music, away from the techno you may have heard from him before. Ahead of a tape next month, he's dropped this track, which feels exploratory and wistful. I look forward to hearing more. 

India Jordan - Emotional Melodical
You may have seen or heard about India Jordan's new release on Local Action entitled For You, but I really just wanted to share this particular track. It's a 140bpm banger, almost beatless bar a few thumping bass drum hits and reverbed claps. It rolls along with harp-like arpeggios, leaving chords entirely unresolved. Yearn for the club with this one.

Ganrang Percussion Group & ɟɐɥɯᴉ ɯnɹsʎᴉp - Bulukumba
Fahmi Mursyid is a prolific producer, putting out music every other day it seems. For this release, he's taken the sounds of a/the Ganrang Percussion Group of Sulawesi, Indonesia, and used granular synthesis and repetitive rhythms to really stretch out the possibilities of the sound. It's hypnotic and energising at the same time. 

Otherworld - Tape Music for Heinous Whining
Imagine the swirling noise at the start of 'Blue Flowers' mixed with the jangly detuned guitar sound of Underworld's 'Shudder', decomposed and destroyed and stretched out to 20 minutes. That's what you get here. It's sublime.

Christine Ott - Chimères (pour ondes Martenot)
This album is reportedly the first by its composer to feature the fabled Ondes Martenot at its centre. It's a fascinating release, dramatic and cinematic, full of emotional intensity alongside its musical exploration. With titles like 'Darkstar', 'Todeslied' (Death Song), 'Pulsar' and so on, it's clear that there is great weight behind the compositions, with orchestral variations embellishing and bolstering the strange sound of the key player here. Not one for light relief, this is big music for big feelings and ideas.

via dekum - Northern Scenes
via dekum is a duo made up of Joe Burns and Ed Zeringue. You may know of Joe from his work as Blind Prophet, but this is entirely different, a heavy and rich album full of ambient vistas and vignettes. Deep, immersive sounds, you can get lost in these spaces. 

Fault Radio Talks | A Conversation with Suzanne Ciani
Kind of no need for a blurb here, this is a conversation between ose, whose music I've featured a fair bit over the past year, and legendary synth artist Suzanne Ciani.

Mosey - Clincher
Three lush and hazy tracks from Austin's Mosey. Club music for patios. Not in a bad way of course, we need that right now. 'MMV' in particular has a real Mr Fingers vibe. 

FEDERICO DURAND - Alba
I've not actually listened to this in one sitting yet, rather putting it on while I do things like tidy away footballs and blankets in the garden or do the washing up in the evening. It's lovely stuff, gentle yet rich. BALM FOR THESE TIMES or some other such nonsense. "Alba is the Spanish word for the moment when the first light of day appears, before the sun rises, and all things appear magical." That's the most beautiful thing I've read lately. 

Duluoz - Sleep Music
Similarly apt is this release from Duluoz, aka Denver artist Ponyrok. He and his wife had been having difficulty sleeping (haven't we all lately?) so they put on some soothing music, talked, battled insomnia together. Then he decided to collect some of the works he'd made over the past few years and put them together here. It's gentle, drifting, pulsing, distracting, unobtrusive. Perfect, in other words. 

Splash Pattern - Sentinel
Real chunky, jagged, atonal beats here. Robotic body-shaking music here. Full of weird soul too though, almost like slowed-down electro. Clanking and abrasive, with sounds that evoke the thought of ESG's 'UFO', if it were played by two pieces of sheet metal. Remixes come from object blue (relentless!) and Misantrop (chunk!). 

Lam - chlor dub
A big swirling gloop of a track. I was flicking through the latest posts no SC (as I do) and when I reached this one I stopped dead and let it play out in all its aquatic murk.

Alina Maldonado - El sonido no llena el espacio, lo crea
This is a collection of tracks by performer/composer Alina Maldonado that were originally used for different dance and theatre performances in Mexico. Ranging in length from two to nine minutes, the pieces are gently ambient, delicately pulsed, combining virtuoso strings with electronic thrums.

Death Kneel - "Moral Horror" Mix (for Encrypted Voicemail)
Wait until after dark for this one. As the title suggests, it's dank, horrific, mournful, terrifying. The sound of children playing rendered uneasy by ghostly voices and echoey piano. Chilling whispers. Clanking metal. I just watched Hellraiser this week while this is much less direct in its horrors, there is definitely a connection.